*Maddox*

He looks like her. He has her blonde hair, even if it’s only a fine, silken dusting of it so far. I run my fingertips over his eyes, closed tight against the light flickering in the quiet corridor. They’re the same shape as her eyes, and I know as he starts to open them and see the world for the first time, they will eventually be the same heartbreaking blue as the mother he will never know.

I will see Isla in him. I will see her every time this unnamed boy looks into my eyes. I don’t know if that's a mercy from the Goddess, or a haunting...